Spectator's Sport
by Hikaru Irving
Summary: Oneshot While traveling to the Cheagle Woods to retrieve an AWOL Fon Master Ion, Jade decides to watch the unfolded battled between two Seventh Fonists and an irate liger queen.


Hikaru: I was playing today, started a new game. I set the difficulty on Hard mode, and when I was fighting the Liger queen, I was having a rather difficult time. Luke died twice (so I used two out of my grand total of three Life Bottles), I was almost out of apple and orange gels and by the time Jade decided to show up, I was pretty confident that I really could have done the rest on my own … stupid Jade.

--

Jade put his teacup down, rubbing his temple irritably. While the Engeve leader Rose went about to fuss over his empty cup, Anise the Fon Master Guardian was yaking his ears off. It was far too early in the morning for this sort of thing.

"—and this morning, I woke up, he's gone! That Ion, can't do anything right without me … and on top of that, I'd heard that he's gone to investigate the Cheagle Woods! Why's he going to such a dangerous place by himself!?"

Jade shut his eyes tightly, and stood, held up a hand for silence.

"Anise, that's quite enough. The Cheagle Woods are but north of here. We'll go and secure Ion, is that all right?"

Anise tilted her head in that way of hers with those tiny gloved hands balled up under her chin.

"Really? Why would you want to come, Colonel?"

Jade pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose; they were slipping, as they often did. People told him to simply get a pair that wouldn't slip so easily, but this small thing gave his fingers something to do, and time to think. Besides, he was quite fond of his glasses.

"I have some business I must take of pertaining to that location."

As they thanked Rose for her hospitality and walked out the door toward the north gate of the village, Anise piped up another question.

"What sort of business, Colonel?"

Jade heaved a deep sigh, but mentally berated himself. Anise was a Fon Master Guardian, after all, and as such it was her duty to gather information in order to perform her job more efficiently. Although, why she would think Jade of any possible harm to the Fon Master, he could not guess.

Perhaps his red eyes put off more people than he initially thought.

He flashed a special smile, one of his famous vampire smiles that, combined with his pale complexion and red eyes, made him more vampyric than he was. Or perhaps he actually was a vampire, who could know.

"Now, now, Anise. It's top secret information accessible only to those of the Malkuthian military. I'm sorry to say I cannot tell you."

Brown eyes narrowing, Anise stuck her tongue out at him. Playfully, Jade would like to think.

"Boo! Oh, well, fine. I heard you're a strong fonist, so whatever. Let's go."

Anise dashed up ahead of Jade onto the packed dirt road. The morning mist was disappearing, the pale light of the sun gaining more golden color as its beams spilled across the rolling green hills of the Rugnican Plains.

Jade adjusted his glasses again, keeping at his leisurely pace. Anise, who was young, only thirteen, he guessed, had no idea how rough traveling by foot was on him and his aging joints and bones these days.

-

At least Jade had not lost his fighting edge. On the contrary, it seemed despite his aging body, his combat capabilities had not declined in the slightest. While Anise pounded away at a few axe beaks in the front line with her gigantic stuffed doll Tokunaga, Jade closed his eyes, focused.

He felt the fonons all around him, in everything around him, within him. After focusing, he opened his eyes, and he could almost see the fonons gathering before him. All his fon slots were open, of course, but the eyes were the most receptive to fonons.

He reached the fonons, amassed them together, and formed them into a tangible thing.

"O maddening gale of the spirits of the earth … Stalagmite!"

Anise steered Tokunaga away from the area where the green earth buckled, the dark brown of the soil beneath boiling over to give way to the jagged blades of solid stone that jutted up out of the ground, impaling those unfortunate axe beaks.

When the monsters' bodies hit the ground with a thump, Jade casually walked on by. Anise followed as she shrunk her Tokunaga to its original size, attaching it to her shoulders so it looked as if Tokunaga's arms were hanging on.

"Wow, Colonel! You hardly batted an eye!"

Jade frowned slightly as he walked through the thick forest with Anise. Yes, he always did never bat an eyelash in the face of death and danger. Others might find it admirable, but he—and certainly others—might find it disturbing.

As the two drew deeper and deeper in the woods, crossing rivers on already felled logs (people must already have been through here), fighting more and more ligers as they advanced, they came to a den sunken in the ground under the trunk of a giant tree.

Stepping over the body of a liger, Anise leaned toward the den, cautious. Her eyes widened.

"Colonel, there's people's voices down there! They sound like they're in trouble!"

Indeed, Jade had keen hearing, and he, too, drew down into the den. As they walked on, Jade heard their voices more clearly:

"I'm using this!"

A young male's voice, with but a slight touch of a noble's arrogance and haughtiness, the expectance to be respected even if said noble were not respectable.

"No!"

A young woman's voice, but Jade could tell this woman—like Anise—was no frail lily in the garden.

"Whaddya mean I can't?!"

"That's the last of our apple gels! Give me an orange gel and I'll heal you!"

"Tch, whatever, lady."

Deeper down, the ground leveled out somewhat, and Jade sensed fonic artes nearby. He also smelled the heavy iron scent of freshly spilled blood. Monster or human, he couldn't quite tell yet.

When they turned around a corner of the deep den, Jade had to hold Anise back from running up in the middle of the battle taking place:

A huge liger, surely the queen of the den, was guarding her nest ferociously, against the young man and woman Jade had heard before—a teenager with long red hair wielding a short sword, and a young woman standing back with a staff, surely she was the fonist.

Fon Master Ion saw them and drew toward them, a light blue cheagle in tow.

"Ion!" Anise said, starting to reprimand him, but she was distracted by the battle with the liger queen.

Ion turned to Jade.

"Colonel, please help them--!"

Jade only smiled, shaking his head. He looked aft to the battle. He recognized the two fighting the liger. Tear, who wore the garb of an Oracle Knight, and Luke, the teenager with a tongue as sharp as the sword he carried.

Jade had seen the sword before when Tear had carried it when the Engeve villagers had stripped Luke of his weapon and taken him inside Rose's house. He wondered before if Luke had any ability at all to use it. Now he would see.

"Pardon my assumption, Fon Master," he began, "but allow me to assess their fighting abilities first. I believe I might recognize them."

"Recognize" them he did as Tear sang a fonic hymn—she was not only a mere fonist, but a Seventh Fonist, one who was born with the gene which allowed her fon slots to gather and control the Seventh Fonon—the most powerful fonon in existence.

Jade had learned long ago to school his expression into one of stone, but at this, sensing the Seventh Fonons Tear gathered effortlessly about her, using them in an almost unrefined way, flinging them left and right to hurt the liger queen, occasionally to heal Luke or herself, Jade had trouble not showing anything.

Wait. Now that he looked properly, It was not only Tear but also Luke who emitted Seventh Fonons. Jade almost groaned. Great. Two Seventh Fonists had caused the hyperresonance around Tataroo Valley, thereby trespassing from Kimlasca to Malkuth.

Jade resigned himself to watching the battle. If these Seventh Fonists could in fact make use of the Seventh Fonon, they could be dangerous. He'd best wait until the fight exhausted them almost completely before he would make a move of any kind.

Luke lunged at the queen with his sword arcing in a slash, but the queen roared, and Luke swore as bolts of lighting rained down on him. His arm, his sword arm, got singed, but—and this amazed Jade—he kept slashing on at the liger queen as if nothing ever happened, and with his keen eyesight Jade saw the burning on the arm slowly disappearing, the skin underneath good as new.

Of course it was faster if Tear healed him, but she was busy casting a fonic hymn.

But this was strange, Jade thought. In a normal Seventh Fonist, the Seventh Fonons blended in almost perfectly with other fonons, until the caster shaped them. But within Luke's body Jade sensed little, miniscule disturbances—almost tiny, harmless hyperresonances.

And it wasn't happening just within his fon slots—it was happening all over Luke's body. That shouldn't be happening, in a normal Seventh Fonist.

Jade stopped, jaw unhinged, as he stared at Luke.

"Could he be … ?"

"Colonel?" Anise asked, staring at him in a most peculiar way.

Jade shook it off. Even if this notion were true, that was not important right now. In fact, this film of little hyperresonances Jade sensed around Luke was proof enough that he and Tear had illegally crossed into Malkuth's borders via hyperresonance—and that was the matter he had to attend to at this time.

Jade could not stop his smile.

"I've recognized them all right," he said, starting toward the battle.

The ground shook and his ears were deaf with the liger queen's roars, but Jade remained calm as he came within earshot of the two Seventh Fonists.

"Allow me."

Luke and Tear gave him peculiar glances as they froze where they stood, Luke on the ground, scurrying away from the liger queen covered in blood and bruises, and Tear, jaw dropped and pale from overuse of fonic artes.

But as Jade aimed a fonic arte at the liger queen, Luke and Tear accepted his help into battle, distracting the queen so that Jade might cast.

Jade kept his eyes on Luke the entire time.

If it is true … if Luke is indeed a victim of that … terrible abomination of my conception … what am I to do? What is he to do? Does he even know?

The liger queen clawed at Luke, wide red gashes opening his arms and shoulders. Tear chanted a quick fon verse to heal him, but Jade knew that Luke needed no healing from her hand. Granted, it would take time, but Luke would heal over of his own accord, thanks to the Seventh Fonons his body was currently drenched in.

Jade flung a fonic arte at the queen, and she fell, mewling pathetically as her death drew near.

Exhausted, Luke sheathed his sword, dropping to the ground.

Eyes still fixed on the redhead, Jade sighed, turning to address Fon Master Ion.

Even if he is … I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Mentally sighing, Jade looked at Ion, Fon Master of the Order of Lorelei.

So Yulia justly reminds me of my faults.

--

Hikaru: I meant it to be a little more lighthearted, but what the hey! Jade's an angsty character like that.


End file.
